Floyd Roland

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, once a project is approved and put into the capital plan in the year it is approved, when contracts are let out there is room to involve community corporations in that phase, the construction phase. But the front end work we do with departments is based on the department’s requirement. If it’s Education, Culture and Employment about the size of a school, they would come to us with that preliminary information. If it’s Municipal and Community Affairs for a shop or something of that nature or RWED for an office, we would become involved in that place. Once...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, our intention is, as we begin this work and pull the initial portions together, to meet with Members of the Assembly and through committees and put the work forward in that way and begin the in-depth discussion that we need to do on how we come up with a program that is going to work well for us as the Government of the Northwest Territories. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, we don't disagree with what the Member stated. Again, the way we recognize it through our audited financial statements, it is considered a grant-in-kind. From our side, we feel that once we get up to speed on the rest of the subsidies and how that work goes on, we would then put this onto that stack, as well. But the initial phase we're working in, it has not been included. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the reason we have become involved again, is the fire marshal who did the inspection back in May of 2002 required us, or the Department of Education, Culture and Employment…This is how it would have worked. The Department of Education, Culture and Employment would have been informed that they would have up until 2006 for use of the facility to come up with other plans. We got involved, as they were notified of this, in securing space and doing the technical work around this evaluation, so that was done.

The Department of Education, Culture and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the issue around the MAP or the Management Assignment Program is something that we are aware of and I’ve started to look into that matter as the concern has been raised to me. There are no specific targets at that point. There are avenues for any employee within the government workforce to be nominated and move into that program, then they follow through a pretty rigorous assessment program and out of that we see who we can move up the process through the MAP. So there are no specific targets, but it is an issue that we’re aware of and looking to address...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the Member is correct; that through our structure and pricing, we do not incorporate the capital costs of that into the price of the product at the pump. What we do is we do book our environmental amount of approximately $250,000 on an annual basis. So that is taken into consideration. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, to my right I have the deputy minister of Public Works and Services, Bruce Rattray, and to my left I have the director of the petroleum products division, Mr. Mike Aumond.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in the affirmative action policy, we talk about a representative workforce of the population it serves. We don’t have a set percentage that each department has to achieve, but what we do is reference the population that we serve. So in the case of the Northwest Territories, we’re hopeful that we can see 50 percent of the workforce being of the aboriginal peoples in the Northwest Territories. In some cases, we are very close to that. Some departments are achieving that; in some areas they are not. The average we see now is at 32 percent. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the stabilization fund had a limit of $5 million and I’m told it still does. We are looking at making a change to that, but it is $5 million and the idea is plus or minus if the cost of the product goes up significantly that with that stabilization fund there wouldn’t be any massive increases or reductions if the price of fuel were to drop. In this case what we found was the petroleum products division was carrying, for quite some time, a very high amount within the stabilization fund. We were actually going to be hitting the ceiling of $5 million, and...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the average vacancy within government as a whole would vary in the area of probably 12 percent.